I strategically planned staycation week to try to catch the incoming wave of shelf reset toys at major retailers. My local Targets are either just starting reset or about to start for August, which means new toys for the upcoming holiday season! Earlier this week, though, I was busy hitting up Barnes & Noble for more new summer reading! As you can see, Scholastic’s Pokémon Alola Region Handbook is finally out—and thank Godric, because it’s about the only way I can figure these new Pokémon names! I play too much Animal Crossing: New Leaf and rush through Pokémon Shuffle stages and competitions to have time to contemplate names. The handbooks help tremendously when I organize my trading cards because I’ve got them sorted alphabetically by basic Pokémon and the evolutions are sorted next to those. Naturally Scholastic’s guides are must-buys—and full of great artwork and information (such as attacks and pronunciations) for every Alola region Pocket Monster, including Komala! Next to my new handbook you can see National Geographic Kids has another cute but educational Koala reader, “Climb, Koala.” Yes, it’s a pre-K/K reader, but I just loved it, full of adorable koala pictures and information about Unofficial Team Komala’s favorite critter! You can also see I’ve purchased some green tea/matcha Koala’s March cookies (at Meijer; available also in many Asian markets) because Lotte supports The Australian Koala Foundation (www.savethekoala.com). Save the Koala Month 2017 is in September, so I’m saving up to make some purchases from their gift shop!  That also reminds me to mention I saw previews online of one of the new TCG blister packs coming within the week—the Komala Promo foil gets a US release! Here’s hoping that ships out with the new TCG expansion, I really cannot wait!

On to the reason for my blog post: Tomy mini Pokémon play sets are out at Toys ‘R’ Us! My local TRUs now set the Tomy merch in the video gaming section of the store, so make sure to look around if you don’t see the stuff where it usually used to be shelved, it can be scattered in several spots depending on the individual location. I only purchased two smaller sets, one with Pikachu and another with Eevee. The little toys in the sets have suction cups underneath so you can pop them onto the play/storage bases included. These are similar to some of the mini Disney Palace Pets playsets, figure+suction cup+play base. There were several larger play sets available, along with two large houses that included multiple Pokémon; I just couldn’t buy all that as I blew way too much in pursuit of a 30 year dream for my birthday, the Calico Critters homes you can sort of see behind my new purchases. Interestingly, the Sylvanian Families I purchased back in the 1980’s were Tomy products; they are originally from Japan, just like Pokémon. When they were reintroduced to the US market, they were renamed Calico Critters, but you can see they retain the Sylvanian Families name in Japan, the UK, Australia, etc. I think I’ll use the Pokémon minis in my Calico Critters homes as playthings for the resident critters. The Tomy play sets do have furniture, accessories, etc., for the mini figures, so if your kids enjoy Calico Critters, they should like the Tomy play sets because they really do mimic the Calico Critters concept, albeit on a smaller scale. I did not spot the girl trainer figure at TRU, but hopefully that will show up sometime soon. It will be interesting to see where Target shelves this stuff as I think Tomy is marketing toward girls, but the TRU clerk told me her son loves Pokémon, so she’ll likely buy for him. The little accessory pieces are around the size of Shopkins, I imagine this play line could be very hot/popular for the holidays, hmm…

Loretta